Keeping Up the Momentum: Early Career Scientists in Policy-making and Community Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlyn Hall ◽  
Ethan Howley ◽  
Evvan Morton ◽  
Erin Murphy ◽  
Hannah Bercovici ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Native American ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Impact

<p>To make an impact on science policy, a relationship between scientists, community leaders, and decision-makers cannot stop at one successful event – it must grow and evolve. The Arizona Science Policy Network aims to facilitate collaboration between early career scientists and decision-makers to draft science-informed policy. Beyond providing interactive and cross-disciplinary training and curriculum to scientists, we facilitate opportunities to practice in real situations, including speaking at town halls and public hearings, organizing public science science cafes and science days, writing policy memos and briefs, and advising on bills. In 2019, we successfully brought more than 60 early career scientists to the Arizona State Capitol to discuss drafts of the complex, multi-state Drought Contingency Plan with decision-makers. Since then, the state government has invited us to help draft sustainability- and climate change-focused legislation. We consider issues like climate change, water quality and availability, heat adaptation and mitigation, science education, ecological and social impacts of mining and industry, waste management, and emerging technologies. As we worked in impacted communities, we soon realized that we were missing the voices of community leaders in the conversation between scientists and policy-makers. In order to correct this, we hosted several science forums in breweries and cafes throughout Arizona. The science cafes initiated collaboration between policy-makers, scientists and community stakeholders, including Native American tribes. These meetings gave scientists, community members, and policy-makers a platform to discuss the environmental and socio-economic  impact of mining sites specific to each forum’s location. Early career scientists contributed their scientific expertise to explain how we can address region-specific problems. Community members also shared their knowledge of each unique area and context of the impact of current business and policy. Policy-makers brought their perspective on how science is used to enact change. From these efforts, we have fostered a more equitable and inclusive environment to ensure that all perspectives and knowledge are included in new bills and policies. Our program has provided a unique experience for scientists to further understand the broader impacts of science on communities and society. This presentation will reflect on the lessons learned in drafting policy with decision-makers and community leaders.</p>

Linking Scientific Research to Development Agenda

2018 ◽  
pp. 374-391
Author(s):  
P. K. Kenabatho ◽  
B. P. Parida ◽  
B. Matlhodi ◽  
D.B. Moalafhi
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, the scientific community has been urged to undertake research that can immediately have impact on development issues, including national policies, strategies, and people's livelihoods, among others. While this is a fair call from decision makers, it should also be realized that science by nature is about innovation, discovery and knowledge generation. In this context, there is need for a balance between long term scientific investigations and short term scientific applications. With regard to the former, researchers spend years investigating (or need data of sufficient record length) to provide sound and reliable solutions to a problem at hand while in the latter, it is possible to reach a solution with few selected analyses. In all cases, it is advisable that researchers, where possible should link their studies to topical development issues in their case studies. In this paper, we use a hydrometeorological project in the Notwane catchment, Botswana, to show the importance of linking research to development agenda for mutual benefit of researchers and policy makers. The results indicate that some key development issues are being addressed by the Project and the scope exists to improve the impact of the project.

Predicting Diabetes amongst Native American Elders

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-43
Author(s):  
S. Upadhyaya ◽  
K. Farahmand ◽  
T. Baker-Demaray
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Operating Characteristic ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Policy Makers

One in three Americans will be diabetic by 2050, and the rate of diabetes is disproportionately high among Native Americans, especially among Native elders age 55 and older. Early identification and prevention strategies have been regarded as the cornerstone of preventative medicine. The objective of the authors’ research was to identify factors related to diabetes and their interactions specifically among Native elders and develop a simple prediction model which can be used by healthcare professionals while interacting with Native elders in remote or rural areas. Data from a survey of 18,078 Native American elders was used in their study. After eliminating outliers using Pearson’s residuals and Cook’s distance, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.7812 for men and 0.7230 for women. The results from the authors’ analysis provide additional perspective on how diabetes affects Native elders thus helping healthcare providers and policy makers when dealing with these community members.

scholarly journals Using building adaptation to deliver sustainability in Australia

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara J. Wilkinson ◽  
Kimberley James ◽  
Richard Reed
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Office Building ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Carbon Neutrality ◽  
Building Adaptation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Decision Making Tool

PurposeThis paper seeks to establish the rationale for existing office building adaptation within Melbourne, Australia, as the city strives to become carbon neutral by 2020. The problems faced by policy makers to determine which buildings have the optimum adaptation potential are to be identified and discussed.Design/methodology/approachThis research adopts the approach of creating a database of all the buildings in the Melbourne CBD including details of physical, social, economic and technological attributes. This approach will determine whether relationships exist between attributes and the frequency of building adaptation or whether triggers to adaptation can be determined.FindingsThis research provided evidence that a much faster rate of office building adaptation is necessary to meet the targets already set for carbon neutrality. The findings demonstrate that a retrospective comprehensive examination of previous adaptation in the CBD is a unique and original approach to determining the building characteristics associated with adaptation and whether triggers can be identified based on previous practices. The implication is that a decision‐making tool should be developed to allow policy makers to target sectors of the office building stock to deliver carbon neutrality within the 2020 timeframe.Practical implicationsDrastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are required to mitigate global warming and climate change and all stakeholders should be looking at ways of reducing emissions from existing stock.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the existing body of knowledge by raising awareness of the way in which the adaptation of large amounts of existing stock can be fast tracked to mitigate the impact of climate change and warming associated with the built environment, and in addition it establishes a framework for a decision‐making tool for policy makers.

scholarly journals Measuring Urban Resilience to Climate Change in Three Chinese Cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 9735
Author(s):  
Mingshun Zhang ◽  
Yaguang Yang ◽  
Huanhuan Li ◽  
Meine Pieter van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Research Needs ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Resilience Index ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
Monitoring Progress

Building an urban resilience index results in developing an increasingly popular tool for monitoring progress towards climate-proof cities. This paper develops an urban resilience index in the context of urban China, which helps planners and policy-makers at city level to identify whether urban development is leading to more resilience. The urban resilience index (URI) suggested in this research uses data on 24 indicators distributed over six URI component indices. While no measure of such a complex phenomenon can be perfect, the URI proved to be effective, useful and robust. Our findings show that the URI ensures access to integrated information on urban resilience to climate change. It allows comparisons of cities in a systematic and quantitative way, and enables identification of strong and weak points related to urban resilience. The URI provides tangible measures of not only overall measures of urban resilience to climate change, but also urban resilience components and related indicators. Therefore, it could meet a wide range of policy and research needs. URI is a helpful tool for urban decision-makers and urban planners to quantify goals, measure progress, benchmark performance, and identify priorities for achieving high urban resilience to climate change.

scholarly journals Are citizen juries and assemblies on climate change driving democratic climate policymaking? An exploration of two case studies in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wells ◽  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Lina I. Brand-Correa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
The Impact

Abstract In light of increasing pressure to deliver climate action targets, and the growing role of citizens in raising the importance of the issue, deliberative democratic processes (e.g. Citizen Juries and Citizen Assemblies) on climate change are increasingly being used to provide a voice to citizens in climate change decision-making. Through a comparative case study of two processes that ran in the UK in 2019 (the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury and the Oxford Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change), this paper investigates how far Citizen Assemblies and Juries on climate change are increasing citizen engagement on climate change and creating more citizen-centred climate policy-making. Interviews were conducted with policy-makers, councillors, professional facilitators and others involved in running these processes to assess motivations for conducting these, their structure and the impact and influence they had. The findings suggest the impact of these processes is not uniform: they have an indirect impact on policymaking by creating momentum around climate action and supporting the introduction of pre-planned or pre-existing policies rather than a direct impact by being truly being citizen-centred policymaking processes or conducive to new climate policy. We conclude with reflections on how these processes give elected representatives a public mandate on climate change, that they help to identify more nuanced and in-depth public opinions in a fair and informed way, yet it can be challenging to embed citizen juries and assemblies in wider democratic processes.

scholarly journals ‘Strengthening community from the inside out’: Transformative possibility for climate change resilience and adaptation in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kaitlyn Simon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Alternate Possibility ◽  
Political Act

<p>How do we organise society and adjust our human relationships with the natural environment to adapt to a changing climate? How do we decide to make these adjustments? These questions shape Aotearoa-New Zealand climate change discourse across adaptation research and central and local government policy. A resilience approach to adaptation is one conceptual response that has gained popularity over the past decade. However, some critical geographers argue that the dominant typologies of resilience have been normalised as neoliberal capitalist strategies and positioned as ‘neutral processes’, and that these strategies can perpetuate inequity and unsustainability. Critical geographers therefore suggest focusing on addressing the root causes of inequity and unsustainability through transformative resilience and adaptation.  This research builds on critical geography work by exploring how Common Unity Project Aotearoa (CUPA), a charitable trust located in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City, is fostering a community that understands and performs transformative possibilities for resilience and adaptation. For community members of CUPA, ethical actions of a community economy, a process of collective learning and an ability to make sustainability accessible contribute to transformative adaptation and resilience. Exploration of these themes provides a grounded example of how communities can adapt to climate change in ways that also seek to transform inequitable and unsustainable capitalist relations with one another and with the natural environment. CUPA’s transformative work poses implications for councils and decision-makers seeking to build resilience and the capacity to adapt in community, offering alternate possibility for discourse, decision-making, participation and engagement.  I approach this project as a scholar-activist in recognition that research is a performative, political act. Through a scholar-activist methodology I use participant observation and interviews to gather insight and information. I ground my critical geography lens in care in order to contribute to a knowledge-making around climate change based in possibility and multiplicity, rather than of authority and judgement.</p>

scholarly journals Yet another lockdown? A large-scale study on people's unwillingness to be confined during the first 5 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Martinez-Garcia ◽  
Alejandro Rabasa ◽  
Xavier Barber ◽  
Kristina Polotskaya ◽  
Kristof Roomp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Important Variable ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Economic Support ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
The Impact

Population confinements have been one of the most widely adopted non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by governments across the globe to help contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While confinement measures have been proven to be effective to reduce the number of infections, they entail significant economic and social costs. Thus, different policy makers and social groups have exhibited varying levels of acceptance of this type of measures. In this context, understanding the factors that determine the willingness of individuals to be confined during a pandemic is of paramount importance, particularly, to policy and decision-makers. In this paper, we study the factors that influence the unwillingness to be confined during the COVID-19 pandemic by means of a large-scale, online population survey deployed in Spain. We apply both quantitative (logistic regression) and qualitative (automatic pattern discovery) methods and consider socio-demographic, economic and psychological factors, together with the 14-day cumulative incidence per 100,000 inhabitants. Our analysis of 109,515 answers to the survey covers data spanning over a 5-month time period to shed light on the impact of the passage of time. We find evidence of pandemic fatigue as the percentage of those who report an unwillingness to be in confinement increases over time; we identify significant gender differences, with women being generally less likely than men to be able to sustain long-term confinement of at least 6 months; we uncover that the psychological impact was the most important factor to determine the willingness to be in confinement at the beginning of the pandemic, to be replaced by the economic impact as the most important variable towards the end of our period of study. Our results highlight the need to design gender and age specific public policies, to implement psychological and economic support programs and to address the evident pandemic fatigue as the success of potential future confinements will depend on the population's willingness to comply with them.

scholarly journals Opportunities for early-career researchers to engage with science policy through the Biochemical Society

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Education Funding ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion

Science policy can be broadly defined as a two-way dialogue between science-related sectors and government. It involves the exchange of scientific findings and opinions with policy makers to inform the decision-making process, as well as the scrutinization of legislation around science-related topics to ensure it is based on sound evidence. Science policy covers a variety of issues, including research, education, funding, ethics, public health and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

Inclusive Strategies in Climate Change Teaching, Learning and Action

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Sparrow ◽  
Katie Spellman ◽  
Malinda Chase ◽  
Christina Buffington ◽  
Bonnie Murray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Conservation ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Energy Awareness ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Personal Connection ◽  
Informal Educators ◽  
The Impact

&lt;p&gt;Our project &amp;#8220;Feedbacks and Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Engaging Learners in STEM Using NASA and GLOBE assets&amp;#8221; also called &amp;#8220;Arctic and Earth SIGNs&amp;#8221; (STEM Integrating GLOBE and NASA) engages in climate change education, audiences underserved and underrepresented in STEM e.g. Alaska Natives, those economically disadvantaged, and those who work in rural regions. We invite and support teams of formal and informal educators and community members from Alaska and beyond to participate in a Climate Change in My Community course and to work with youth on climate learning and a stewardship project relevant to their community. Our strategies include: 1) using a culturally responsive learning model we developed, 2) braiding multiple knowledge systems, 3) negotiating content and process in course planning and implementation, 4) ensuring a voice and a seat at the table for everyone, 5) inquiry-based, experiential and place-based STEM teaching practices, 6) intergenerational teaching and learning, 7) interactive Meet the Scientist live video sessions, 8) building relationships within and beyond participant teams and with the project team of educators, Elders and University of Alaska/NASA scientists, 9) providing skills and citizen science tools to engage youth in addressing climate change issues in their communities or for use in developing their community climate change adaptation plans, and 10) cultivating partnerships such as the Association of Interior Native Educators, Renewable Energy for Alaska Project, Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, and the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2020, ten teams implemented stewardship projects that reflected many of the principles of citizen/community science that effectively engage diverse audiences. Of these course participants, 100% increased their confidence to facilitate real-world inquiry activities (p &lt; 0.001), 77% increased their knowledge of the earth systems, (p &lt; 0.001) and 69% of the students who teams worked with, reported increased critical thinking skills (p&lt; 0.01). &amp;#160;Twelve individuals from these teams were interviewed: 100% of interviewees reported benefits to students, such as learning to collect data, presenting their findings to their peers, exploring STEM careers, and interacting with scientists; 83% reported specific benefits to themselves as an educator which include increased content knowledge and the opportunity to think more deeply about the science and opportunities to connect with students outside of the classroom; 100% reported that the project goals and activities align with and are relevant to the needs and interests of the participants, including contribution to conservation efforts, contribution to science, curricular goals, and a personal connection; 67% reported community engagement, including involving Elders and community members in data collection and storytelling, representatives of local park and water conservation district offering a science talk to the whole community, and advertising their project at the community post office. Those that didn&amp;#8217;t report involving the community noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;

Analisis Analisis Peran dan Tantangan Sukuk Hijau Bagi Ketahanan Perubahan Iklim Pada Wilayah Rentan Selama Pandemi Covid-19

2022 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 978-989
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fawaiq Suwanan ◽  
Syahrul Munir ◽  
Santi Merlinda
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Data Collections ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Climate Change Resilience

Sovereign Sukuk has become a promising instrument for a country to overcome difficulties in financing government projects. Sukuk is a financial instrument for the Islamic capital market with a low level of risk. Green sukuk becomes popular since most of the conventional investment activities ignore the environment aspect. Starting in 2018, Indonesian government has developed a green sukuk scheme as a financing instrument for environmentally friendly projects to reduce the impact of global climate change. This study aims to analyze the role and challenges of green sukuk for climate change resilience in highly vulnerable areas during the Covid-19 crisis. This study is conducted through a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data collections are carried out through literature studies and case studies on some climate projects in highly vulnerable areas in Indonesia. The results show that during the Covid-19 pandemic, green sukuk has contributed an important impact for climate change resilience in highly vulnerable areas. There are some challenges in the development of green sukuk. The lack of awareness of social risks as well as environmental risks have become main challenges. In the future, the decision policy makers should provide greater incentives and a more inclusive legal umbrella for green financing schemes.

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